Chapter 261: University (2) - Markets and Multiverses (Patreon)

Author's Note: Minor change to a previous chapter: In chapter 225, it is noted that multiple universities exist in town. I have decided to condense this down to one university in town instead, simply because I think that it's unlikely for a university town in this era to house multiple universities. It could, but I think it's unlikely, and it would also flow a bit better story-wise if the town of Vintella had one university total.

We spent four hours touring the research facility and getting to know everyone. Felix seemed incredibly excited every time he saw one of our future co-workers. To my surprise, so was I. Every single person in this research team had done some sort of innovative modification to their body. Furthermore, it was obvious they were passionate about their research. Every single one of them was very animated when they talked about their body modifications. It seemed to resonate with Felix's passion for crafting.

The most successful modification we met was a woman named Ella. She had given herself an extra two fingers on each hand. They were attached to her wrists, and looked kind of like two extra thumbs. Furthermore, these two extra fingers were metal, giving her an incredible grip.

Her other fingers were also strengthened far beyond regular human fingers. All fourteen of her fingers had agility and strength that regular humans couldn't match. She showed us her ability to grip different tools and manipulate them at tricky angles, and I was impressed. She could probably outperform normal doctors in surgery by leaps and bounds.

My suspicion was borne out when Sebellum told us she was the team's surgeon. Someone had to help people actually swap out their muscles and tendons... and that person was Ella.

I also found it interesting just how much better her artificial hands were, compared to my shapeshifting attempts. My shapeshifting attempts had given us about a 15% boost to our base strength. The woman’s hand modifications had instead boosted her grip strength around 700%. She had a grip strength almost five times that of a normal adult male. She could crush a few thinner metal pipes just by gripping them.

Of course, I also had no idea whether her hands could naturally grow stronger. Last world, I had observed a few swordsmen improve the grade of their skills during training, and seeing their stats improve afterward. I had no idea whether Ella could still benefit from this kind of training, now that her hands were artificial.

At least in this world, it was a moot question. Ella's hand strength was about equal to grade 10. There was no way people in this world naturally reached grade 10 in strength. The world tier was too low to make skill improvement easy.

Even more interesting, the essence consumption was pretty low. Ella spent 8% of her essence on her hands - and that was as a surgeon. She had to be making extensive use of her hands every single day. When I saw Ella, I realized that the research team's goal wasn't some distant, far off dream. At that very moment, I was already looking at a successful 'enhanced human.' Ella had only taken a small step beyond humanity - but she had found a way to improve beyond human limitations. If one person in this research team had already succeeded, others would as well.

Ella also made me wonder if this world would have cyborgs in the future. The benefits of melding steel and flesh were clearly excellent when people knew what they were doing. I could imagine people in the future having subdermal armor, enhanced senses, and bodies made of metal. The only real limitation was binding essence generation, and this team was designed to fix that very problem.

I also wondered what Felix would turn into after a few worlds, if he kept delving deeper into this magic system. The ways that Felix might improve could take him even further than the natives of this world. After all, in this world, there weren’t many ‘natural’ magical objects. Apart from the ingredients for ability potions, every other 'magic' object was man-made. But in our first world, the ocean itself had a certain mental effect if we looked at it. What would happen if Felix used a similar material to improve his muscles? There had to be some that were compatible with the human body.

Of course, the research team wasn’t filled with success stories like Ella.

Two of the researchers, named Dellia and Marvin, were examples of what happened when people tried things and failed. Dellia had attempted to replace her eyes with a series of intricate glass lenses. She claimed that human eyes were ludicrously terrible. She had dreamed of replacing them with something better. She had longed for the ability to zoom in on distant objects when she looked at them, as well as the ability to view smaller objects.

In short, she had tried to turn her eyes into both telescopes and microscopes.

Instead, she had gone completely blind in both eyes. Her attempts at making a delicate series of sliding lenses had gone catastrophically wrong. The only thing her new eyes did was devour essence at an absurd rate.

One of the first things she asked me to do was regrow her human eyes. I was more than happy to oblige, since that was what the research team brought me in for. Still, I took it as a stark reminder of how wrong prosthetic research could go. Without a safeguard, any attempt at modification could become a catastrophe.

Marvin’s problem was similar, although harder to fix. He had tried replacing several muscles in his arm, similar to Ella’s hands. Unfortuantely, he hadn't cooled down the metal mixture quite enough. Instead of enhancing his muscles, he had grafted semi-molten metal to his bones. After that, his arms had been almost completely ruined. Worse, he didn't have enough binding essence generation to just replace his arms. Until I had come along, he had made do with only one arm.

In total, the research team had about 30 people in it. Most of them sported a successful modification, but nine of them needed my healing instead.

Still, even though the injuries were sometimes horrific, I could tell the team was very passionate. Even the ones that had horribly injured themselves hopped right back to their research notes once I cured them. It was far more drive than I had expected to see from people who had nearly become disabled. And Felix was drinking the atmosphere up.

I was happy that he was having such a good time.

However, there was one sour note to my thoughts. Something that started to cycle through my mind as we kept looking at new limb modifications and failed experiments.

Sallia might have been really interested in this magic system as well. Sallia's second magic system was the manifestation magic system. She used that magic system to access a lot of self-strengthening spells. However, these researchers seemed to have gotten better results using their prosthetics. She might have enjoyed mixing this into her combat style somehow. I could imagine Sallia ripping through hordes of enemies with a metal arm, moving far faster than a normal limb ever could...

Sadly, she wouldn't ever have the chance to try out this magic system. That made me a little sad.

After we finished meeting the research team, Felix and I split up. Felix still had one more research team to meet. He sounded almost as excited about making railroads as he was about prosthetics. I hadn't been invited to the railroad research team, so I headed back to the dorms to see if Iselde and I were roommates. We had filed out an application for becoming roommates during registration, but didn't know the results yet.

It took me a few minutes of knocking on random doors before I heard Iselde’s voice.

“Miria! We're roommates!” she said. “Come in!”

I grinned, and opened the door.

Inside of the room, I saw a pair of beds stashed in the corner of the room, as well as two desks, two closets where we could stash our clothes, and two bookshelves. There were also two trunks stuffed in the corner of the room, where we would be able to store other items. Finally, there was a single window stationed at the edge of the room, with some curtains for if we decided to expel the sun from our room. The room looked rather bare bones, but it was surprisingly roomy. I had expected the dorm rooms to be a bit less spacious.

"I'm glad we ended up as roommates," said Iselde, grinning. "I was nervous."

"I'm glad we're roommates too," I said. "It'll be much easier this way."

Iselde nodded. “Definitely. Do you have your schedule for tomorrow?”

I checked the items the university gave me, before I nodded. “The university already included it in my packet.”

“Then it’s time for something even more important,” said Iselde, glancing at our barebones room. “Decorating!”

Author’s Note:

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